Right, it's not the content, but one's stance towards it. Check out Wieners
in The Hotel Wentley Poems or Ace of Pentacles. Content as painful as one
could wish. But looked at with what Yeats called "a cold eye." We know the
occasions of our lives more intimately than other things, but they are
nonetheless things. Clarity in extremis is usually more interesting, and I
think more difficult to achieve, than exhibitionism, self-pity or anger.
At 12:52 AM 7/9/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>
>Hi Bill,
>
>I would agree with Scott -- every poem is an intellectual exercise.
>I think we must have muddled the act of writing with content
>somewhere along the line . . .
>
>It seems to be not so much a matter of what is personal in a poem
>(Stevens writing very much around his personal notions of reality
>and art) than it is about those antique things 'the humours', and
>the extent to which these form part of a poem's content or tone.
>Maybe . . . . ? Or perhaps the extent to which the poet reveals
>his or her ego (in the psychiatric sense) within a poem?
>
>For example, place the works of Stevens alongside those of
>Ginsberg -- the difference seems obvious, but, now that I think
>of it, quite tricky to describe. A question of the sober temperament
>vs. the intoxicated? Bridled vs. unbridled? Self-censoring vs.
>XXXX? These don't fully work for me somehow, although again
>I'm not sure why. Seems too neat. Stevens can be pretty
>unbridled and intoxicating in his own way, equally sensuous
>and free-flowing.
>
>Perhaps the emphasis in Douglas's phrase was 'exercise'
>rather than 'intellectual'? You mean more of a personal necessity
>Douglas? Don't all poets write from personal necessity?
>Isn't it also possible for a tortured individual to specialise in
>comic verse as opposed to tortured verse? Edward Lear . . .
>
>There's a problem here in trying to second-guess an author's
>mental state by their work, I think.
>
>Andy -- not sure what we're (I'm) really talking about here.
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